A top company culture expert shares why employers need to check in before employees check out.

Sally O' DowdWould you give up $30,000, or more, to keep working remotely?A lot of working professionals would. More than six in 10 people at large U.S. companies – 64% – would prefer to work permanently from home, even if they’d have to forfeit a $30,000-a-year raise, according to a 2021 survey of 3,000 employees conducted by Blind, a platform for anonymous career posts.Furthermore, 39% of U.S. adults would consider quitting their jobs if their employers didn’t offer flexible work arrangements, according to a May poll of 1,000 people by Morning Consult for Bloomberg News. For Gen Z and millennials, the figure jumps to 49%.

With these trends as context, we talked with Kristin Graham, employee engagement and culture consultant at Ragan Consulting Group.Graham: It matters more than ever after the world has gone through a productivity experiment in the last 18 months. Innovation blew the dust off of corporate culture, and employees are emboldened to want more than before.Q: Let’s discuss the importance of corporate culture. Why does it matter? At the baseline level, culture is what companies will hire or fire over. It’s where the line is defined. On a broader level, it encompasses three things:

• What employees are told to expect.
• What employees actually experience.
• What discretionary effort employees are willing to give.

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